Lately technology has become one of the important aspects of life, especially the Internet. It also has many effects in political involvement throughout the nation. Some say Internet and technology impacted the society in negative way, but on the other hand quite a people agreed that it has positive affects. Aim of this paper is to discover what kinds of impacts Internet has on how we process political information, and does it have positive or negative affects on government participation. Personally I do agree that technology has huge affects positively on how we get involved into politics and government. Even though great portion of American population lost their beliefs in political-efficacy, but with Internet it is definitely increasing. Another positive effect of Internet is that it decreases the cost of participation. For example it saves time, because people wouldn't have to show up on election places physically. With technology government participation is only few clicks away. .
So does the Internet have any affects on political participation? Few years ago political scientist Robert Putman argued that citizens are becoming more "lonely bowlers" who no longer interacts socially, and as a consequence no longer willing to take part in political matters (Putman, 2010, FirstMonday). On the other hand Russell J. Dalton argued that what's happening is not a decline in participations, but a diversification of how individuals in America take part in political involvements (Dalton, 2010, FirstMonday). Before all this technology and Internet only way of participating in government was traditional way. Which is by showing up physically in voting place, and participations would take place within the proper political sphere. But Internet made voting possible for every citizen for those who might be ill and cant leave the house, or for those who is constantly busy. In this case I agree with Russell J.
